Violin prodigy can make coyotes sing

An Oregon City violin teacher has a growing clientele

By Ellen Spitaleri

The Oregon City News, Sep 17, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Instructor Elisa Boynton gives some pointers to violin student Grace James. Boynton is the owner of Park Place Violin Studio in Oregon City.

ellen spitaleri / oregon city news

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Grace James can make the coyotes sing.

“Yesterday she was playing ‘O Susanna’ on the back deck and the coyotes heard her and started singing back to her,” said Kammie James, Grace’s mother.

The 9-year-old girl has only been playing the violin for about a year and a half, but she has already learned fiddle songs and classical techniques and is learning to read music as well, said Elisa Boynton, her instructor and owner of Park Place Violin Studio in Oregon City.

“We went to a Scottish festival and I heard a girl who played fiddle and I was inspired” to learn to play the violin, said Grace, who attends Colton Elementary School.

In Boynton she found a local instructor with many years of experience; she is the violin teacher at Lewis and Clark College, works with three levels of orchestra students at Oregon City’s Alliance Academy Charter School and gives private and group lessons in her studio.

Boynton, who is originally from Finland and a graduate of internationally known Sibelius Academy, opened her studio in 2007.

She is a musician herself and plays the violin, viola, guitar and the Kantele, a Finnish harp; she especially enjoys playing for special occasions.

She gives lessons in her studio all year, but in the fall “more structured classes” begin that fit in with the school schedule, she said. Her students come from all over the metro area and range in age from 3 on up.

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